Computer network nodes are often arranged in redundant arrangements to provide reliability. These redundant arrangements can make the analysis of the computer networks more difficult.
When failures occur in the computer network hardware, parts of the network can become inaccessible to other parts of the network, causing “down time”. To address the “down time” network management software applications can be deployed to help anticipate failures and find a root cause of any failures which occur. An example of a network management software application is described in Walker et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,723 “Network Management Event Correlation in Environments Containing Inoperative Networking Elements”, incorporated herein by reference.